X-Men: The Official Game is the upcoming title from Activision based on what is rumored to be the last entry in the X-Men movie series, X-Men: The Last Stand. The game is being developed by Northern California-based Z-Axis, and it lets you play as one of three X-Men--Wolverine, Nightcrawler, and Iceman--in an adventure positioned to be a bridge between the second movie and the upcoming The Last Stand. We got our first look at the title in February and found it to have some promise. At a recent press event, we finally had the opportunity to try out a work-in-progress version of the game running on the Xbox 360, Xbox, PlayStation 2, and the GameCube.

Will this mark the X-Men's last trip to the silver screen? Only time will tell.

The games on display at the event offered a total of six playable levels to try. The levels were broken down into two per character. Three of the playable levels amounted to each character's tutorial level from the beginning of the game, and the other three levels offered a taste of the action you can expect from later on in the game.

Wolverine's tutorial consisted of a multipart fight against Sabretooth that went through Liberty Island. You'll start out with some trash-talking and a brief brawl, followed by your nemesis escaping and you giving chase. As you race to try to stop the villain, you'll engage soldiers who'll need to be taken out with some good old-fashioned butt-kicking. The series of encounters acquaints you with Wolverine's combat moves and special mutant abilities to heal himself and fly into a deadly berserker rage. You'll eventually wind up in a final battle with Sabretooth, where you'll need to make use of all the abilities you've been taught.

All of the aforementioned abilities also came into play during the second playable Wolverine level, which involves a fight against Lady Deathstrike (yes, we know she died in X2, but we reckon there's a plot point that explains what's up). The battle is a good deal more challenging than the Sabretooth fight due to Deathstrike's aggressive artificial intelligence, which is great at blocking haphazard attacks. In order to defeat her, you'll have to fight smart and make use of the raging electrical storm going on around you as you fight--it appears Storm is in a bit of mood and you need to help her out.

The next pair of levels we tried was Nightcrawler's, which took place in the Alkali base seen at the end of X2, at the bridge outside of New York. The tutorial eased us into his acrobatic play style as well as his stealth-oriented skills and, of course, his teleportation. The main focus of the level involved us sneaking around the base and taking out guards. Thankfully, in the wake of the events from X2, the base had taken a great deal of damage, which made the areas we navigated a mass of jutting pipes and rubble that were tailor-made for a German acrobat who can teleport. Though sneaking played a large part of the level, we also found several Tomb Raider-esque segments that found our blue hero swinging about and clinging to ledges.

The latter part of the level found us engaging in combat with soldiers, and it posed a different challenge than the melee battling we did with Wolverine. Fortunately, though, Nightcrawler lacks Wolverine's claws, and his teleportation proved to be a handy way to deal with foes, as you'll be able to 'port out of harm's way or surprise your enemies and whale on them until they drop. In between fights we had the chance to test out Nightcrawler's special ability to heal himself by blending into shadows, which has the handy side bonus of making him hard for enemies to spot. The only catch to the ability is that you need to stay rooted to the spot you initiated it in while you heal.

The three playable characters offered here aren't necessarily the ones you'd expect.

The second Nightcrawler level had us racing around the length of a massive bridge, defusing bombs planted by Multiple Man, or Jamie Madrox to comic fans, who seems pretty intent on blowing it up. You'll have some aid, thanks to Storm, who's floating nearby, but you'll have to take out the bomb-planting mutant and his many multiples. As you defuse bombs within set time limits, other bombs will appear with invariably shorter time constraints. The nice touch to the level is that you can make the most out of Nightcrawler's teleporting by sticking to the top of the bridge rigging to get to the areas noted on your radar. Once you find the spot where the bomb is you'll drop down and kick some butt to get to it and do your defusing.

The final set of levels we tried belonged to Iceman, where we learned to use his abilities around the Statue of Liberty and faced off against Pyro at a nuclear plant. As we noted in our last look, the Iceman levels offer a decidedly different style of gameplay, as you'll be riding his ice slide around levels. The tutorial introduces you to the major mechanics of his powers, including ice blasts, ice shields, lock-on targeting, and controlling the direction of your slide. You'll hone your skills by flinging through rings, extinguishing fires with your ice blasts, and taking out flying foes.